Encountering the Love of God

My first encounter with our loving God was in March of 1994 while we were living in Ankeny, Iowa. I had recently accepted new employment as an Engineering Tech.2 with a Consulting Engineering firm after the manufacturing company in Osceola, Iowa closed ending my employment as Engineering Project Coordinator. Osceola had been good to me, I had experienced rapid success and was very fortunate to have worked with an extremely talented and experienced group of people.

Osceola was also my wife's home town and we had both attended high school there. So after being absent from the community for several years, we returned to open our own business and I also worked for a local manufacturing company. We worked hard and most of the time long hours, through ups and downs, but prospered overall in almost everything we did. We were home and prospering, surrounded by family and friends, the stuff dreams are made of.

On one occasion I remember a return flight home from the corporate office located in Memphis, Tennessee and thinking to myself: you know, this small town farm boy hasn't done to badly for himself. The business trips were frequent and took me away from family but I had met some wonderful new people living in beautiful parts of the country where I had never traveled before. My career seemed successful and the business was doing well. We were thankful for our prosperity and our new and old friends. We patted ourselves on the back for our achievements and thanked many friends who had in some way contributed. We gave thanks to everyone, everyone except God. Never once did we stop to thank our Lord, never once did we give God praise or credit for all of our blessings.

Then the announcement came, the manufacturing plant was closing, I was losing my job. The corporate office had decided to consolidate and was moving the company to Newburn, Tennessee. The announcement was made and I had six months to find another job while helping orchestrate the removal of equipment and the relocation of an entire manufacturing facility.

My wife and I decided to sell our business and relocate to Ankeny, IA. where I had accepted employment as an Engineering Tech II with a Consulting Engineering firm. We sold our business and home, relocating for what I thought would be the next step in my career. And after seven years in the restaurant business, my wife and I were both tired of the hours. We were both excited and ready to move on in our careers with my wife returning to banking to her original career path of banking.
Those were our plans, but little did we know that God was also looking at the lives. Looking at the paths he originally intended us to walk and how far we had strayed. God was planning events that would challenge us to reevaluate our lives and make new choices.

The Engineer was standing beside me physically slamming his fist into the top of the old drafting table and shouting at the top of his lungs. This was my knew job, the next step in my career. The entire design department cowered while eyes peered over the top of adjacent cubicles as the old drafting table received blow after blow.

I had been instructed to revise the Engineers designs by the company Vice President who reviewed them as being incomplete and the Engineer resented the changes since he had not been informed or consulted. It was just another day of the same foul language and turbulent atmosphere I'd experienced from almost day one in this company. There were a few people who seemed to be of good character and ethics here, but very few. Needless to say my hopes of being successful in the company soon expired. I wanted no part of this group and they of me and I soon found myself looking for a way out. I transferred to the field as an Inspector and although I still had limited contact with some of the same people, my new group of peers were much better to work with and I began to think things were going to work out.
This building season had been a very difficult year. An extremely hard winter and a summer of devastating floods made site development and construction extremely difficult. We moved through summer into late fall and with winter rapidly approaching I felt secure in my new position and thought all was well. Winter came and with it a general layoff due to the previous years poor building season. For the first time in my eighteen year career I was out of work with no prospects.
After I was laid off I sat alone typing resume after resume. I couldn't understand why the resumes were producing such poor results. It was as if the a door had close and opportunity after opportunity passed me bye. Never before had I experienced any problems in finding work. If a man wants to work there's always a dollar to be made. That's what I'd said in the past, that's what I had said until now.

It had been five months of resumes and interviews. I was sending out so many resumes I decided to have a small print shop photo set and make copies for me. When my employment in Osceola ended I was given a nice severance package and this coupled with our savings had gotten us this far, but both would soon be gone. I saw this as being one of the lowest periods in my life and began to feel like a total failure. What I couldn't see at the time was how God was using these events to reshape a person who had grown proud and self centered. God was using this time to humble me, to remold and reshape me into a usable vessel. And as I found no other place to turn for help, I began pray. I prayed hoping God would hear and help me. I'd prayed daily for weeks but nothing happened, even God didn't seem to hear me or care.

Until one afternoon I stopped looking through the help wanted ads and prayed once again. This time the tears were flowing as I asked God and Jesus to help me. My heart was sincere and open as I asked our Lord for help: what am I to do, how will I feed my family, where will we live, what am I to do - Lord I'm at the end. Then as I cried this plea to the Lord I was suddenly embraced by the deepest feeling of peace and love. I had never before in my entire life felt anything like this. A love so holy and magnificent, with no beginning or end, no height or depth, no way to measure, and no words which I will ever speak could justify or describe it. The only way I could ever to express this love would be to say if you were to take every love you've known over your lifetime: your dad, mother, wife or husband, children, brothers, sisters, grandparents, grandchildren, friends, etc., and put them all together, all the love you've ever known - they would compare as a grain of sand thrown into the ocean. The love that embraced me was so great had Jesus appeared at that moment and said come with me, I would have left all behind without a single question. His love makes everything else so unimportant and incomplete, there is nothing else that compares.

While our Lords love was being breathed into me, my physical body seemed to be electrified. It was as if every nerve ending in my body was being stimulated with an electric current as wave after wave after wave pulsed through me. The most wonderful and totally alive feeling. A state of grace that is simply overpowering and overwhelming where the body seems to resonate.

Then God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit spoke to me. No I didn't hear an audible voice, but when this happens you know its our Lord communicating with you. It's not like a thought or an impression but it fills you mind pushing everything else aside and is more like knowledge imparted to you. Our Lord told me: "Everything will be all right, but you need to make some changes in your life. Use your head a little less and your heart a great deal more." That's all that was said, so very simple but so pure and true.

All of my life had been spent in the Engineering and Design disciplines. In my younger days my favorite school classes were the science's where everything could be tested and measured. I had attended church when I was younger but then drifted away as I grew older. I still acknowledged that there probably was a God and academically thought I'm a good person, I lead a good life and I think I'll go to heaven. But I had never felt His love in my heart, not like this. I had no idea that an all consuming love like this even existed. I had never loved Jesus with my all my heart, not like this. Not until I felt His love did I truly understand what He meant by love your brother, your neighbor, your enemy, the world and all of His creation. Not until I felt His love did I truly understand the sacrifice He made for us.

I'm not sure how long my first encounter with our Lord lasted. It seemed to last only a few minutes but when it was over I found the Lord had given me two gifts. With the skill of a surgeon He had literally reached into my chest and removed a cold hard worldly heart and replaced it with a renewed one. God had given me a brand new heart in those few short moments that was filled with His presence and grace. God had just touched me with his glory and I would never be the same again.

In the day's that followed I discovered His second gift. When I prayed the same sensation of electricity came over me time and time again. Jesus had left me with the Great Comforter and a hunger to understand and learn more. So I started on my quest to know God and our Savior Jesus Christ. I started reading His word and praying several times a day to Him. The more I communicated with Him the more electrified my prayers became. This new heart He gave to me was so wonderful but oh so tender. When I wanted to tell someone of my experience I found that I couldn't. My throat would knot up and I would begin to tear, the harder I tried the larger the knot in my throat became. Our Lord had touched me so deeply but it was as if He didn't want me to share. I tried at times to relate this to members of my family but was not able. Yet God had placed a burden upon my heart to share this with my family, friends, and all who would listen. But there it was, every time I tried to share I would stumble and choke up. This tender new heart that God had given me was not being released to share and I didn't understand why.
Then as time passed I learned more of His word and as I walked further with Him I was slowly released to share with family and friends. Of course now I know the Holy Spirit was leading me and that God wanted me to walk further with Him before releasing me to share. He wanted my faith to grow, for my spirit to mature and to understand more of His desire for my life.

God

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